


Scary Movie

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, F/M, Movie Night, Post S1 fic, Watching Horror Films
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 06:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11007765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Post-S1. Belle is eager to learn as much as she can about this new world, and watching horror films is all part and parcel of that. Rumpelstiltskin can’t help thinking, however, that her suggestion of a movie night has ulterior motives.Written for the Monthly Rumbelling prompt: "Movie Night"





	Scary Movie

**Author's Note:**

> So, three of these films Emilie de Ravin actually starred in. The final one is made up, but will be the plot of a forthcoming fic - watch this space ;-)

 

If Rumpelstiltskin was alarmed when he came home from the shop to find that his living room had been turned into a veritable blanket fortress, then he didn’t show it. He simply leaned in the doorway, peering into the cocoon to see if he could see Belle.

“Belle, love? Are you in there?”

Receiving no response, he began to feel a little bit more perturbed, fearing that perhaps the house’s entire supply of blankets and pillows had somehow become sentient and had eaten his petite beauty alive. He inched a little further into the room and gingerly poked about at the blankets, trying to find some kind of opening.

“Belle? Are you all right in there?”

“Oh, Rumpel, I didn’t notice you’d come back. You’re just in time.”

He spun around to find Belle coming into the room with a tea tray. She was beaming from ear to ear, and she handed him the tray before diving down into the fort through a previously unseen entrance. A moment later her head and arms ducked back out, grabbing the tray from him. Rumpelstiltskin continued to stand outside the fortress, looking at it with an increasingly perplexed expression. Over the past couple of weeks of Belle living with him, he had introduced her to a lot of the wonders that the Land Without Magic had to offer, and she had been incredibly enamoured with most of them, especially the TV. It had not escaped his notice that the blanket fortress had encapsulated the TV table.

Belle’s head popped out of the blankets again.

“Aren’t you coming in, Rumpel?” she asked brightly before disappearing into the woollen void once more.

Still a little bewildered, Rumpelstiltskin nonetheless obediently kicked off his shoes and crawled into Belle’s blanket fort, finding her seated comfortably on a large pile of pillows. He received the distinct impression that if he went upstairs, he would find that none of the beds had any covers on any more. She seemed to have used his entire supply of linen to create the fortress, but she looked so snug and perfectly at home there that he didn’t think he could begrudge her it. She patted the pile of pillows next to her before pouring the tea. Rumpel sat down and accepted the tea gratefully, taking a few sips before asking the question that was burning in his mind.

“Belle... As fabulously well-constructed as this blanket fort is, why are we sitting in it?”

“I thought that we could have a movie night,” Belle said, rummaging around in the cushions beneath her and unearthing the TV remote and the listings magazine. “And I thought that it would be cosier in here. And that it would add the necessary atmosphere.”

Rumpel raised an eyebrow.

“The necessary atmosphere for what?”

Belle flicked through the TV listings until she came to the correct page, and she eagerly pointed out one of the channels. It was hosting a pre-halloween horror film fest, and Belle looked at Rumpel excitedly as he scanned the offerings that the night had in store, his eyebrows shooting to his hairline a couple of times.

“Are you absolutely sure about this?” he asked.

“I’m trying to immerse myself in this land’s culture, Rumpel,” Belle said sagely. “Being scared out of one’s wits as a form of entertainment is part of that culture.” She gestured around their snug cocoon. “Hence our current position in a place of absolute safety from demons and zombies and other menaces.”

Rumpelstiltskin looked over at the far corner of the fort over the TV, where his quilt was starting to droop somewhat. He was not at all convinced of the protective properties of the fort, but he didn’t say anything.

The quilt, disturbed by their coming and going, dropped down completely and obscured the TV screen.

“Ah.” Belle sounded sheepish. “I guess my architectural attempts weren’t as sturdy as I first thought.

“It was a very ambitious first attempt,” Rumpel said valiantly as they fought their way out of the collapsing fort. “Although I must admit that it would probably have got quite warm in there completely encased in duvets.”

They rescued the tea set from the blankets and finished their respective cups. Belle looked around her at the remains of her fortress, and then up at Rumpel.

“So, what do you say?” she asked.

“To what?”

“To the horror film fest tonight? I thought that we could make it into a truly traditional evening. I bought pizza and microwave popcorn and everything.”

Although he was having some slight misgivings about the content of the films they were about to watch, Belle’s wide-eyed enthusiasm for sampling everything that the Land Without Magic was infectious.

“All right,” he said. “But don’t blame me if you get nightmares tonight.”

Belle gave him a Look, her patented Belle Look, and Rumpel could not help but give a snort of laughter at her expression, which in its turn set her off, and fresh peals of laughter erupted when the final part of the blanket fort collapsed over her head.

“I think some urgent repair work is needed,” Belle said once she’d wrestled the blanket off her.

Rumpel raised a hand, waggling his fingers. “Structural integrity guaranteed.”

Belle shook her head. “No, Rumpel. The whole point of building a blanket fort is to build it. There’s a sense of satisfaction and achievement.”

“Your last attempt at building a fort looked incredibly impressive, my dear, but you can see what happened to it.”

“That’s why I have you to help me on the second attempt.” She moved the tea tray and stood up, setting about gathering up the blankets and cushions. As simple as it would be to magic them a perfect blanket fort, Rumpelstiltskin would admit that there was a certain pleasure in the trial and error of doing it by hand, of cushion towers collapsing and Belle getting wrapped up in the blankets.

“You see,” Belle said, once the fort was reassembled - not quite so all-encompassing as before but still cosy and snug for film watching. “That was far more fun than you just snapping your fingers and having it all done in two seconds.” She rushed to prop up one stack of cushions where it threatened a cave-in.

“Yes, it was,” Rumpel admitted. The fort once more secure, Belle gave it a look of approval her hands on her hips, before rushing off to make the pizza and popcorn, and Rumpel settled down for an evening of horror movies. He took a look at the schedule, hoping that the films on offer would not be too scary. Although Belle had always been able to see right through his facade and there was no point in trying to put on an unafraid act in front of her, he still didn’t want to be jumping out of his skin every five minutes. He had never really been one for horror films under the curse, and his feelings towards them hadn’t changed now that he had regained his memories. Still, he supposed that it was a rite of passage that Belle wanted to experience, and as long as they were doing these things together, he really couldn’t deny her.

He shook himself crossly. It was just a few horror films; he could survive that. Presently Belle returned with two large glasses of soda and the kitchen timer, and she settled herself in the fort, switching the TV on and flicking through the channels until she found the one that they wanted, and they watched the last fifteen minutes of a Christmas-themed horror movie, the premise of which was so ridiculous that it was almost impossible to be scared, then Belle went to retrieve the food. An adaptation of _Carrie_ was about to start, and Gold thought that he would be safe with that. He’d read the book, and so had Belle. It was a good place to begin their horror initiation.

Well, he _thought_ it was going to be. The embarrassingly high-pitched squeak that he gave the first time that there was a jump scare on the screen - it wasn’t even really a jump scare, just something sudden happening - put paid to that idea. Belle gave him a little amused smile out of the corner of her eye, a slice of pizza halfway to her mouth.

“We haven’t even got to the scary parts yet Rumpel,” she said sagely.

Rumpelstiltskin took another piece of pizza and focussed very hard on eating it, rather than on the screen.

They managed to get through the rest of the film without incident, Gold feigning interest in the rapidly reducing popcorn as Belle stared rapt at the screen. He had always known that she was brave and fearless, and she evidently had an iron constitution as well. He had not been expecting her to be so engrossed by the horror genre, but it seemed that his little former maid never ceased to amaze him.

“So what did you think?” Belle asked. “Since you spent most of the ending looking at the popcorn rather than the screen, I’m going to assume that you prefer the book.”

Gold gave a slow nod, and thought that it might be fortuitous to clean up the plates whilst the commercials played in the break between films. Truth be told, he had been entertaining the thought that Belle had posited this movie night idea simply as an excuse to snuggle up to him during the scary bits, but if their current state was anything to go by, then it was going to be the opposite way around.

They switched the TV off half an hour into _The Hills Have Eyes,_ that proving too much for even Belle’s fascination, and she shuddered, cuddling close against Gold and taking a fortifying sip of soda.

“Ok, maybe that one wasn’t such a great idea,” she muttered. They stared at the blank TV screen for a while, cuddled in together, and Belle groped around on the floor for the listings page, squinting at it in the darkness. Rumpel snapped his fingers and a ball of flame appeared in his palm, and he held it up for her to read with. She didn’t begrudge him the magic; she did not want to move any more than he wanted to move away from her to put the lights on. Together they perused the listings until Belle tapped an entry halfway down the page, a film starting on another channel that had piqued her interest; a paranormal investigator taking the case of a young woman who believed she was being possessed by something unnatural.

Rumpelstiltskin really wasn’t sure that his heart could take much more, but he nodded none the less and Belle turned the TV back on, quickly channel hopping to the right station before grabbing a pillow from the fort and pressing it into Rumpel’s lap.

“For you to hide behind,” she said sagely.

“I don’t need a pillow to hide behind!” he protested, but Belle’s expression brokered no arguments, and he continued to hug the pillow as the film got underway, and sure enough, he did find himself burying his face in it during the more unnerving moments. Beside him, he could feel Belle’s silent laughter, and he glared at her from behind the cushion.

“I’m beginning to think that you planned a scary movie night precisely for this reason,” he grumbled.

Belle bit her lip, her eyes bright and mischievous even in the eerie light from the TV, and it had to be one of the most adorable and alluring sights that he had ever seen.

“Maybe I just wanted to find out your weaknesses,” she teased, bopping him on the nose before feeding him the last piece of popcorn. “But it’s all right. I promise I’ll keep you safe from the monsters under the bed tonight.”

There was a purr to her voice, and Rumpel gulped before turning back to the screen, peeping over the top of his cushion as the paranormal investigator and his alcoholic priest friend began what was shaping up to be a rather eventful exorcism.

As her hand found his in the darkness and squeezed, something told him that Belle would be more than a match for any monsters that might present themselves.

 


End file.
